InDesign FX: Captain Marvel’s Star
So like a few bajillion other folks, I saw Captain Marvel recently. Fun movie, especially the bits with “Goose” the cat/flerkin.
And since I tend to see the world through geek-colored glasses, I wondered about two somewhat ridiculous things as I sat in the theater. The first was which version of QuarkXPress was I using in 1995 (the year the movie was set). Turns out it was 3.2, which you can read all about at the indispensable Internet Archive. Funny how our hero was able to effortlessly establish communication across the galaxy from some spare Radio Shack parts, but in those days I had to manually cobble together a bunch of text boxes on a page to resemble a table. Ah the ’90s…
Anyway, the second thing I wondered about was how to recreate the cool 8-point beveled star on the uniforms of the Kree and Captain Marvel.
Jude Law sports an extra fancy bevel-on-bevel version.
But for starters I just wanted to figure out how to recreate the basic star on Brie Larson’s uniform.
And after a little noodling around, I came up with a decent approximation of it.
So here’s how it’s done. (Not that I expect you’ll ever actually need to make Captain Marvel’s star, but rather because, A. It’s fun! and B. In doing so you’ll pick up a few important InDesign FX techniques that you can use in other projects.)
Start by double-clicking the Polygon Frame tool. This opens the dialog box where you can set the number of points and the Star Inset value. We need 8 points and an inset somewhere between 40–45% of the size of the star.
Next, we need to rotate it so one of the points is at the top. With the star selected, enter 360/16 in the Rotation field of the Control panel. That’s 360° divided by the total number of sides on the star (16), which gives us the correct rotation of 22.5°
Then, so we don’t get confusing results when we start applying effects with angles, we need to reset the star to zero degrees, without changing its orientation. The easiest way to do that is to draw a small no stroke no fill object inside the star.
Then select both objects and click the Add button in the Pathfinder panel. The rotation of the topmost object is kept when the two are merged and our star now thinks it’s at 0°.
Now we need to move 4 of the points towards the center of the star, so they don’t stick out as much as the others.
Select them with the Direct Selection tool, set the Reference Point in the Control panel to the center, then use the Scale controls to reduce the scale % which will move the selected points towards the center of the star.
Now it’s time to apply a fill color. Something in a gold-bronze will do.
Plus a stroke of the same color, aligned to the outside.
And finally, two separate Bevel and Emboss FX applied to the Fill and the Stroke.
You can click or drag the little proxy in the circle to play with the Angle and Altitude values and get different lighting on the star. Be sure to use Global Light so the same values are applied to both the stroke and fill.
And there you have it. One star logo suitable for super hero powerful enough to take down Thanos and save the galaxy!
If you want to make the extra fancy Jude Law version, just replace the gold color with a gray in the vicinity of 25% black, copy and paste the star in place, scale the top copy down 50% and add a tiny drop shadow.
Key takeaways
- Accessing Polygon tool settings
- Using math in panels
- Resetting rotation angle with Pathfinder
- Scaling individual points on a path
- Applying Bevel & Emboss to Fill and Stroke separately
- Using Global Light
Fun!
Thanks, Caleb!
I often forget about how useful being able to create custom artwork directly in Indesign is, thanks for the reminder, I’ll be sure to use what I’ve learnt in this tutorial in future projects!
Thanks, Sophia :)
Where does the X in the middle of the star come from? When I draw it in ID, I don’t get that. Is this missing a step or something?
Increase the size of the bevel on the fill.
Thanks!
The X indicates that the content of the frame is set to Graphic. You get this whenever you use the Frame tools (Rectangle, Ellipse, and Polygon), or convert the content type to Graphic using the command Object > Content > Graphic. It won’t affect the results you get in this case.
Oh, of course. Thanks.
For creating items like the star, my go-to program is usually Illustrator, but after seeing how this star is made and going through the steps, I think I’ll rethink my process from now on. Thanks for the lesson
That is COOL.